Moving picture expert group (MPEG) proposed ‘Event Reporting’ due to a new standard working item of MPEG-21, a digital item. Referring to definitions of MPEG-21, the digital item means a structured digital object with a standard representation, identification and metadata. The Event Reporting means a process of Event monitoring, which requests a report on a certain Event occurred during the digital item is used in user terminal, and reports occurrence of the Event. The user includes all of a provider, an authorizer, a distributor and a consumer of the digital item.
MPEG-21 includes seven core elements, i.e., Digital Item Declaration (DID), Digital Item Identification and Description (DII&D), Content Handling and Usage, Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP), Terminal & Network, Content Representation and Event Reporting.
An object of the Event Reporting is to provide a standardized interface for measuring and reporting the Event occurred when using the digital item of MPEG-21 in direct or indirect. The Event Reporting is applied to usage report, e.g., Performance and Copies of the digital item, and technical report, e.g., Bandwidth Usage/Availability, Network Congestion, Load Balancing, and a financial report, e.g., Proof of Purchase, License Purchase and Delivery.
Accordingly, the Event Reporting increases understanding user's action, provides generation, delivery and consumption of the digital item, and enables the user to manage circulation of the copyrighted material by reporting the Event related to royalties and finances.
The Event Reporting is classified into Event Report Requests and Event Reports.
The Event Report Request means a process in which an Event Report Request data, which is preferred to be generated as metadata, requesting a report for a certain Event occurred in accordance to use of a digital item is generated and transmitted.
The Event Report means a process in which that an Event Report data, which is preferred to be generated as metadata, containing report data is generated and transmitted, when an Event specified in the Event Report Request data occurs.
Accordingly, the Event Reporting system should include an apparatus which generates Event Report Request data in response to a request of a user and transmits the same, and an apparatus which receives, analyzes and stores the Event Report Request data, monitors the Event, generates Event Report data corresponding to the Event, and transmits the same.
The Event Reporting system needs to have standardized data structures of the Event Report Request data and the Event Report data.
However, in the conventional system, there is no apparatus for reporting the Event occurred from usage of the digital item, data structures of Event Report Request data and the Event Report data are not standardized. Therefore, there is a problem that the Event Reporting can not be applied.